


kindred, lost and found

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Birthright Spoilers, Conquest spoilers, M/M, Pre-Slash, leo centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 10:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6235837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo is, in the great and glorious aftermath, lost among the voiceless wonderings of stolen potential.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kindred, lost and found

It’s a simple book compared to those Leo usually reads.

He finds it open-faced on Kamui’s dining table, paper creased and soft against the smooth grain of Nohrian hardwood. Like everything else within the keep anddespite the maids’ persistence, a thin layer of dust lies soft and grey across its scuffed leather.

“Oh,” Kamui says, smiling as Leo wipes the cover with his sleeve. “I think Felicia’s been reading that.”

Felicia looks up from her dusting—a vain effort, in these high ceilings of ancient stone—and shrugs, says, “I was.”

“You stopped,” Leo comments. He cracks the spine to look inside at the small, uneven lines of printed text. “Why?”

Felicia tilts her head to the side, hums. “The premise,” she says, and knocks a vase from its perch upon the shelf. She catches it with a swiftness Leo’s thought past her; Kamui claps and gives his sincerest congratulations. It is, Leo has no doubt, the miracle of the century.

“Soulmates,” she elaborates. “You know, destiny and romance, all that.”

“Trite,” Jakob agrees, striding through the chamber door. “Poorly written, as well.”

“Really,” Kamui says, beginning to frown. “You don’t believe in soulmates?”

One side of Jakob’s mouth lifts in a sardonic half-smile. “No, my lord.”

“Nor destiny?” Leo’s three pages in already, and though he can’t say he’s enthralled by the writing, he’s—interested in this line of conversation.

“Fate, perhaps,” he hedges. “Though I don’t spend much time thinking of these things, you understand.”

“Of course not,” Kamui says. “You’re more interested in how I dress myself.”

“Your personal taste offends the eye,” Jakob says, and moves about his business. Kamui catches Leo’s over the pitiable romance novel and raises his eyebrows. Leo mirrors the expression; he’s seen Kamui’s fashion sense in action.

“You refuse to wear shoes,” Felicia says, but she’s smiling. “You’d freeze to death if it weren’t for us.”

“Ha!” Kamui swallows a mouthful of his breakfast. “I’ll freeze to death because of _you_ and _your_ ice.”

“Blame your own lassitude,” Jakob says, nearly affronted. “You have to be woken _somehow_.” 

“Do you mind if I take this?”

The warm banter around him stops. Leo looks to Kamui, who looks to Felicia, who looks to Jakob, who finally nods. 

“It would serve best as kindling,” he says, brow furrowing, “but it is yours.” 

“Thank you,” Leo says, and when he leaves to return home the next morning, _Kindred_ presses itself in embossed letters against Brynhildr’s front.

… 

The lessons are always the same.

Leagues and leagues east, across rugged country and shadowed canyons, bright Hoshido rolls out from dark and noble Nohr. The sun knows its fields and orchards as the moon and stars know Nohr’s black soil and spider-limbed trees that stretch to scrape themselves against the night.

Excess, his tutors have told him, comes easily to Hoshido.

Excess and weakness, specifically, though Leo’s written too many essays equating the two, just as discipline and strength come readily to Nohr. He’s sick of treading the same tracks time and time again with a mind he knows will soon turn to better and more dangerous paths.

So he finds himself Hoshidan books to sate the curiosity that itches inside him. He hides them with binding belonging to less interesting volumes and reads them only at night by the thin light of candles. Niles approves; he listens to whatever Leo has to say about what he’s read, postulating answers to his questions. 

And it’s _fun_ when Leo manages to forget the consequences of his interest, when his mind’s full of spring blossoms and raw fish over vinegared rice. He’s nowhere close to running away, but Leo yearns with every fiber of his being to know whatever’s beyond this horizon and the next.

Even if there, past a lifetime’s worth of skylines, sits Hoshido’s royal family. Leo understands enmity, its purpose, and the inevitable nature of conflict between his home and the kingdom across it.

Leo is a product of ruthless birth and nurture—for better or worse, his skill has been bent and honed to lethal edges. He knows his place and purpose, has ideas about Kamui’s and others, and when the time comes and his father the King calls for him, Leo will water his own roots with Hoshidan blood.

But—the _ache_ -

He wants to _know_ -

This suppression, this swallowing—it takes the life from him, and he wonders for how long Brynhildr will sprout in fresh growth when the world’s resolved to strip that, too, until he and his magic are nothing more than bare branches reaching in vain to join Nohr’s glittering night. 

… 

The pattern breaks in spring.

Somehow larger than Leo's ever noticed, Kamui stands between two assembled legions. The expression on his face twists something tender in Leo’s gut—Kamui and Elise wear their emotions well and without deception, and when they gather as siblings Kamui’s smiles bring easy joy.

But there is blood in this borderland’s grass and it streaks Kamui’s pale feet gross and macabre. Xander’s mount flicks its ears forward and back, too well trained for dancing unease but tuned enough to its rider and his distress. Leo flattens his hand upon his own horse’s neck, holding his breath, and searches Kamui’s eyes for what he hopes is there.

The desperation on Kamui’s face worsens and breaks as he looks over his shoulder to what he now knows as his inheritance, his _birthright_. For one heartrending second Leo is sure he’s about to watch his brother walk from their family’s arms and into those he’s been raised to destroy.

Kamui gazes one last time at the Hoshidan royalty in their glittering red on the rise, sets his jaw, and lifts one bloody bare foot to step home again. 

…

Kamui sits with his fore and middle fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He’s shed his armor and shivers in his black undershirt and breeches. Leo rubs his wrists as he walks into the room, feeling the atmosphere like a ton of bricks to the chest, and hovers quietly when Camilla and Elise sit on the bed beside Kamui. 

There isn’t much to say and even less to do, but they give their support with the embraces Leo’s less comfortable to offer. The blood’s long since washed from Kamui's skin, but Leo finds himself checking the undersides of his tucked feet for traces of gore. A deep wariness has grown from the twisting of Leo’s gut—he understands patterns, has a knack for keen foresight, and the look King Garon wears every time he faces Kamui-

A war, then. Conquest for the sake of conquest, and at the heart of it all stands Kamui on their father’s strings, striving to leap through their father’s hoops. The devil’s own luck or not, Kamui needs all he can get, and Leo steps into place. 

In all this roiling unrest, _Kindred_ and _Hoshidan Delectables_ stay in their faux-skin on his bedroom bookshelves. Time calls for violence and he answers in kind.

…

Hoshido’s second prince draws his bow and Leo chases him from the battlefield for his brother whose compassion runs itself ragged through his throat, hurtling Takumi’s name into the salt-thick air. 

Something deeper than his bones echoes the sound, but he shuts the lid of himself over it and names it useless curiosity.

…

Kamui’s fingers close over empty air and Leo and Camilla grab at him in tandem, hauling him a step backward even as his body strains toward the wall’s tall drop. The muscles beneath Leo’s grip bunch and tense to rock solidity; Kamui’s half a second from exploding into wings and razor-sharp horns.

But there isn’t _time_ —there’s never enough _time_ to grieve or recollect or sleep. The whole army’s stumbling around with eye bags like storm clouds and though Leo’s caught Niles slipping into Kamui’s tent after dinner, Kamui’s a thin wire pulled to fraying.

So they leave their victory behind them with the defeated prince missing or dead, and when Leo swings up into his saddle his gelding arches his neck and quivers below him. He’s here to keep his brother alive, to keep them _all_ alive at the expense of strangers, but the ache and echo do not leave.

…

“Is he asleep?”

Niles looks up from the spiked and ruffled mess of white hair on his lap, says, “Jakob and Kaze put something in his tea.”

“Thought so,” Leo murmurs, amused despite himself. “You should’ve known him before.”

“Yeah?” Niles pulls the blanket farther over Kamui’s shoulders, and they sit in silence for a moment as Kamui shifts and grumbles in his sleep.

“He used to be impossible to wake,” Leo tells him. “He’d oversleep every morning." 

“It happens,” Niles says, and Leo’s suddenly very aware of the late hour and the absence of his own drowsiness. Niles appraises him in a brief full-bodied glance, nods at a traveling cup across the tent from them. “There’s some left.” 

“You use it,” Leo tells him. “I have reading to do.”

…

He walks from camp with his bedroll and no books to lie in the wet grass and stare at the stars and listen to the warm wind wend its way through these unfamiliar pines.

Some part of him focuses on the forest’s noises with a strange eagerness that both confuses and satisfies him. Leo can’t help but feel as though he’s waiting for something or someone, but as the crescent moon drifts toward his homeward horizon he lies undisturbed and alone. 

…

The blood runs so thick from Hoshido’s crown prince it pools in the carpet. Kamui’s running entirely on will and the promise of an end, has been emptied of much else, but the hollow flat of his eyes when he turns to address them startles Leo.

Later, he will help him back to his feet. Later, they’ll sit again at their family’s table and argue and laugh and live all the tedious details of normalcy.

Now, Leo closes Brynhildr and watches the shell of Takumi, Second Prince of Hoshido, fall at Kamui’s resolve. He supposes it’s a great relief to whatever remains of him, and the firmness with which Kamui continues reflects it.

Yet- 

Leo is, in the great and glorious aftermath, lost among the voiceless wonderings of stolen potential.

… 

And on the other side of fate, Leo wears his father’s crown and mourns the brother for whom it had been meant. The other he mourns, too, in unsent letters that begin and end with _why?_

Camilla, fingers cool against the sides of his face, whispers in a voice so quiet he has to lean their foreheads together to hear it. She, strong and wicked and _warm,_ tells him what he has already suspected.

_This burden is not mine to bear._

He wishes for Elise’s needling taunts and bright eyes and small strength, but he’s lain her beside Father and Xander. He wishes for Kamui’s openness and optimism and compassion but cannot stand his presence more than a few hours. The gulf between them yawns with the unsaid, and Leo will not be the one to breach the distance. He doesn’t think there’s a bridge strong enough to hold what they carry, anyway.

So when Hoshido sends its representative, a royal ambassador, Leo looks down from the throne to the sight of Kamui waving Takumi forward, smiling.

“I always thought you’d get along,” Kamui says into the awkward silence. “I don’t think it’s wishful thinking.” 

“Welcome to Nohr,” Leo says, standing and leaving the dais for less stilted conversation. He thinks, inevitably, that Xander would do a better job of all this. _It’s nice to finally meet you_ is an odd thing to say to the man he’s tried to kill several times over, but Kamui’s smiling like he used to, and Leo can’t say no.

Takumi glances at their brother, a sidelong look Leo realizes he himself has used all his life, and extends his arm to offer his hand in the Nohrian style, says, “I’ve heard a lot,” as Leo shakes it with his own.

 

…

**Author's Note:**

> i opened a word document right after beating birthright and now it's 4 am and i have a few regrets


End file.
